صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

II.

THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY.

HO shall read these pages? Men, perhaps,

WH

with grave eyes, who will detect faults in every line, and yet, seeing that I am in earnest will not cast them hastily aside. Women, it may be, with kind eyes, who will impart to my words a grace from their own pure minds. Children, I hope, whose trustful eyes will see with mine for a little while, until, passing me in the race, they reach nearer to the light itself.

All this is hidden from me; and yet of one thing I am quite sure, namely, that every one who reads. will give to "the Supernatural" a somewhat different meaning. Nor is it necessary for my purpose that it should be otherwise. There are some who think of it as the unseen agency of the Divine Being-the manifestation of His power over as well as in the universal laws of Nature. Others there are to whom it is only a name for phenomena that they cannot yet explain, but

hope to explain when Science has done its perfect work. Are there not many who dream about it as something half-mysterious, half-wicked, but quite delightful, that gives a charm to ghost stories if they are told nicely by a bright fireside?

It is the legend over again of the King's Messengers -Theology, Science, and Art; and perhaps, after all, we cannot thoroughly understand "the Supernatural" until we have heard what each one of these Messengers may have to tell us.

But the Supernatural in Art" is a qualification of the subject less beset with difficulties, and more susceptible of definition. It is to the painter that unknown quantity which cannot be expressed in any terms of Art. Amongst the early Christian painters there was one, taken, like David, from the sheepfolds. What splendours the young Giotto must have witnessed through the long Italian summers-what revelations of glory through the starry nights that might make him think of the angel and the multitude of the heavenly host seen by those other shepherds, who also, thirteen hundred years before, had watched their flocks by night. And then, just think of it, amongst those shepherds might there not have been one, penetrated with the like love of nature, to whom the gold and azure of the Syrian skies would have been as dear as the same changes were to the Florentine? The meridian light

may have been all too dazzling for the pencil, but when the sun had gone down, when the after-glow had faded from the horizon and the stars came out, then!-and that star, that hangs in luminous glory over Bethlehem, shall he not paint it?

And if we could see the picture, what would it be like? And if Giotto painted it, how should he make that star differ from another star in glory? No doubt the definition is so far true. The Supernatural is, in this instance at least, an unknown quantity that cannot be expressed in any terms of Art.

Nor in this instance only. If we examine the works of the best period of Hellenic Art we shall find gods and men represented side by side, absolutely alike. Although the Supernatural was then the almost perpetual theme of Art, yet, guided by a knowledge more refined than that of the later schools, or by an unerring instinct in their apprehension of the beautiful, the Greek sculptors attempted nothing beyond the realisation of the highest types of natural beauty.

It was when Arms had given place to Art-Sparta to Athens-that the second Parthenon arose, the great cathedral of classic times. This temple was to Athens what St. Peter's is to Rome, what its Duomo is to Milan, what Notre Dame is to Paris. There, may have been heard the thunder of the voice of Periclesthere, the persuasive eloquence of Socrates; while upon

the walls were many sculptures, fresh from the hand of Phidias, friezes and metopes, representing in a wonderful series the apotheosis of the beautiful animal we call "man." From one of these I have selected a fragment in illustration of the subject. It is but a fragment only from the story that the great sculptor

[graphic]

has written in stone. In the story complete we see the battles of the Heroes-against the Amazons, who resist marriage, and against the Centaurs, the violators of women-both being alike enemies to the very shekinah of their religion-the incarnation of ideal beauty in the human form. We see the procession of the Panathenaic festival: youths hastening forwards, or curbing back their horses; the victors in the games in chariots; slaves fulfilling menial duties. We see the runners in

the torch-races, men and youths and boys. Then the magnates of the city, grave in aspect; then beautiful women with votive offerings or leading the bulls garlanded for sacrifice; then priests and boys carrying the sacred vestment; and last of all the gods, amongst whom are Hera and Zeus.

But from first to last we perceive nothing to differentiate the natural from the supernatural. The seated figure of Zeus might be that of a chief magistrate in council; the graceful Hera or Demeter might be sisters of the girls in the procession; the horses of Hyperion might be the chargers of the warriors or of

the Amazons.

Contrast with this reticence of Classic Art the treatment of the Supernatural as we see it in the works of the Mediævalists, where this unknown quantity, which cannot be legitimately expressed, is by any means and every means attempted to be implied. The nimbus round the head, varying in colour and design according to the dignity of the sacred character; the wings of the angels, which must be anatomically false; and above all, the curious expedient of representing the saints as of a larger size than that of the other figures in a group.

The outline on the opposite page is from a panel in the Chasse of St. Ursula, preserved in the Hospice S. Jean at Bruges, one of the most precious relics of

« السابقةمتابعة »